A Crazy Election Year

Shall we start this political posting with something we saw coming for months? Billionaire David Koch has pledged “tens of millions of dollars” to help bankroll the campaign of Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.

Of course this is exactly as predicted.  They want to boost the Libertarian Party for many reasons, foremost to get NeverTrump Republicans to the polls, And thus possibly save (some) down-ticket republicans. Losing control over red state legislatures is the real Koch nightmare, because one such loss will end gerrymandering and other cheats in that state. Perhaps forever.

They'll have to spend plenty on leaflets asking goppers to vote "Gary Johnson for president plus republican for all other offices." Flyers that will prove their hypocrisy. And of course they'll target millions of Sandersites, appealing for them to go to the LIbertarian Party, hoping to shatter the Democrats' coalition. They are already setting up Chinese-style social media boiler rooms filled with guys feigning identities in order to rave "Never Hillary!"

The ultimate goal? Complete transforming of the libertarian movement into a front for oligarchic propertarianism. (See my earlier posting: Libertarians and Conservatives must choose: Competitive Enterprise or Idolatry of Property.)  And that whirring sound will be coming from Adam Smith's grave. 

By the way. Does it concern you that Donald Trump has had extensively documented interactions with organized crime figures and a raft of “coincidental” benefits from mob-related construction companies and unions? Are you able to convince yourself that running a casino is just like operating any hotel? Or is it actually rather encouraging that he has been smart enough (very smart) to use sealed settlements to leave (so far) no indictable smoking guns? (Encouraging because if he were president – and awful – at least he’d likely be clever.) What’s clear is that the stunning hypocrisy of accusing Hillary Clinton of “corruption” is as delirious as an openly-bragging philandering, twice-divorced gambling lord attacking the morals of Bill Clinton.

Guys, seriously? Some proportion? This is why they wage war on science.  

== Bernites: swerve to the races that matter ==

How to unleash and make best use of the  political energy sparked by Bernie Sanders? It's one thing to ask his zealous supporters to hold their noses and fight for Hillary Clinton. They'll do that, thinking of the Supreme Court and 10,000 honest appointees instead of Trump-Bush clan ripoff artistes... and because Bernie will ask them to, hugging Hillary in Philadelphia,  

But the real deal?

Unleash the Sanders army on down-ticket races! After all, the thing that hampered Obama from "yes we can fix stuff!" down to "yes we can administer well and tweak a bit," has been the worst U.S. Congress in 100 years.  The laziest, most stubbornly unambitious, dogmatic, (Dennia) Hastert-rule-following, never-negotiating, wretched and utterly accomplishment-free Congress in living memory.

Even more important? At risk of repeating myself - but it bears repeating! State Assembly races.  

If Bernie fans cinched their belts and dug into *those,* then each activist could do real good for America.  Have no doubt, that is why the republicans are starting to make nice to DT (Delirium Tremens) or else pouring money into the Libertarians or even a 4th party run.  They are giving up on the White House and desperate to draw Republican voters into polling booths on any excuse, in order to clutch those legislatures, knowing if they lose them - and cheats like gerrymandering go away - they may never ever get them back.

"No other losing presidential candidate since at least the 1960s has galvanized his followers for this kind of down-ballot movement."  See this article. And there are drawbacks if they become just a lefty Tea Party. Just remember guys, even if you got Bernie in the White H ouse it would have done no good without a Congress.  So give him one.

Give Hillary such a Congress and watch... the middle class will return and the poor will rise and science will be heeded again.

Fight for change!  But do it as grownups.  We have enough childishness over on the confederate side. Those lower-rung races are where ... after Bernie hugs Hillary onstage... you can do some real good.

== Want more reasons? ==

Meanwhile.... House Republicans yesterday released a plan to slash the Federal Communications Commission's budget by $69 million and prevent the FCC from enforcing net neutrality rules, "rate regulation," and its plan to boost competition in the set-top box market. Jiminy, will someone speak up with ONE example of this congressional majority ever doing even a single thing the interests of 21st Century US citizens? Come on. Down in comments.  Name one.  Even one.

And Republicans controlling the Senate passed legislation Tuesday to block new Obama administration rules that require financial professionals to put their client’s best interest first when giving advice on retirement investments like individual retirement accounts.  Truly nothing more needs to be said than the simple and factual headline. Read it over again! No “spin” is possible. Rationalize your way out if it, if you can. 

From the Washington Post: Republicans' hopes for an Obama scandal crash and burn. While the obsessively repeated fox-narrative asserts democratic corruption, in fact, the record shows exactly the opposite. “The Obama administration has been remarkably scandal-free,” David Brooks, a conservative New York Times columnist, wrote this year. 

Oh, there have, no doubt, been screw-ups: failures of policy, misbehavior and cases of poor management. "But Obama’s accusers have yet to document high-level malfeasance or corruption, and in the case of Benghazi, even some investigations led by Republicans have discredited the allegation."  

In fact, the Obama administration is about to be only the second eight-year presidency in well over a century ever to end without a single high official convicted, or even indicted, for any substantial malfeasance of office. Any at all, despite relentless witch hunts by the like of my own representative, Darrell Issa (R-CA). Efforts to find a ‘smoking gun’ that have taken up the greater part of the laziest Congress in U.S. history. 

Oh, what’s the other 8-year administration that came out clean as a whistle, despite desperate opposition efforts to find something corrupt or criminal?  The tenure of Bill Clinton.

Alternative electoral rules? 

Many of the alternative electoral rules suggested by science fiction are tempting, like using the Australian Preferential Ballot system that would solve most of our problems with plurality of first-past-the-post rules.

Others are more ambitious. One is reminded of Heinlein's criterion for citizenship in Starship Troopers... service first, then voting. A far better pattern was suggested in his novel Double Star, wherein computers let us bypass the insane unfairness of electoral representation based on where you live.  District based voting ensures that 40% of Americans will never elect a representative -- and congressfolk blithely ignore that 40% in their district.  A treason made worse by gerrymandering. (Which one party has refined to an art and a reflex.)

Far better for a modern era? Imagine saying that any 750,000 citizens can unite to "buy" or to "elect" a representative, unanimously. All the other reps must find 750,000... say among single university women or all the truck drivers in the midwest.  If your constituency shrinks below 700K you better recruit more citizens or you are out of office and those 600,000 need to fish around and build alliances to get over the mark.

This way, no one is disenfranchised, ever! And yes, it means that large cults, even hate groups, might pool to get a representative or two. So? By the same token, those fanatics would thereupon have ZERO residual impact on ANY other representative. Ponder that.

A new Mussolini? A libertarian alternative? Plus international worries and learning to stay calm.

Back to politics. The Libertarian Party 2016 National Convention, held May 26-30 in Florida, nominated two former Republican governors, Gary Johnson of New Mexico and William Weld of Massachusetts, partly in hope of becoming the go-to lifeboat for sane or quasi-sane republicans fleeing the sinking ship of the GOP.

(To be clear, Donald Trump was not the first to hijack that vessel, only the latest.  Rupert Murdoch did the truly major piracy decades ago, commencing to lobotomize most of the passengers and crew, transforming the once-intellectual movement of Barry Goldwater into a full-blown crusade against scientists, teachers, doctors, journalists, economists and every other profession that uses three syllable words.)

Anyway, if the Kochs and their fellow Trump-hating peers are going to make a third-party move, it will likely be via the Libertarian Party -- (which once had me speak at one of their conventions, and I have spoken at Freedom Fest and on Liberty TV, always urging a libertarianism of Adam Smith, not their current, childish fad of Randian solipsism, so I know these guys.) With time short to get on the November ballot, the LP is uniquely suited - qualifying already in nearly all states - to carry forward half of the Never Trump faction of the GOP. Not just by providing an alternative that's not Hillary... 

...but also aiming to draw not-Trump Republican voters to the polls and thus save many GOP legislators.  

That last bit is why the gambling lords (Adelson and Wynn) and carbon lords (the Kochs and Saudis) and media lords (Murdoch and Forbes and Clear Channel) are desperately pouring support into non-Trump conservative PACs.  Still, libertarians offer especially Koch a second way to turn a lemon into lemonade.  It would, of course, cement the Kochs'  and Steve Forbes's longstanding putsch to control the libertarian movement.

None of this will please the other major non-Trump GOP faction - Religious Zealots -- a fervor not much liked by libertarians. So, will the RZs go off their own way?  Or will hypocrisy rule, as they adapt to supporting a many times divorced, admitted philandering-adultering gambling lord with underworld ties who doesn't care what bathroom Caitlin Jenner uses?  I'll put wagers on the latter.

Can Koch money help Gary Johnson poll above 15%, so he can get in on the debates in Sept-Oct? Even if it helps Hillary Clinton win the White House, it could draw more no-Trump republicans to vote and thus save down-ticket goppers.

Keep your eye also on Freedom Fest, a big libertarian event during the GOP convention in Cleveland and a perfect time/place to spring LP surprises! 

That's where I met arch-conservative comedian and author P.J. O'Rourke, who recently said on NPR's Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me, "I'm voting for Hillary. I am endorsing Hillary," though going on to denounce most of her political positions. Which, he avows, are at least in the normal-sane range.

== Is the world going crazy? ==

A while back, someone wrote to me asking that question. I suggested they take a big perspective: Going crazy "compared to what?" Compared to 6000 years of feudal oppression, grinding filth and ignorance? Compared to a million years of fear and pain before that? Compared to when we wasted the talent of ALL women and all non-whites and poor whites because of prejudice, instead of wasting just a steadily decreasing part of that vast pool of talent, which we do today?

Or are you comparing us to what we could become? Compared to Star Trek - for example - and a much better world? If you're making the latter comparison then fine, sure, we're crazy-crude cavemen! Get angrily militant and determined to make us better, nicer, smarter and more sane! Sure, we fall way-short by the standard of those ambitions for a better, wider humanity. 

But keep in mind the other comparison.

Indeed today's top dogmatism is cynical gloom, shared by both left and right, without a scintilla of historical perspective. 

Our dreams for a better world are used against us! Because we don't live up (yet) to those rising standards, the narrative is that we can't! 

To which I can only reply: Snap out of it!! 

The media does not control you and you do not have to drink Gloom-flavored Koolaid. Easily as many good things are happening as bad, especially given how far we've come. And those good things are making us stronger, so we can take on the bad.

== A wide chasm ==

See how the satirical site The Onion utterly nailed the Trump steamroller way back in July!

More seriously... Alan Abramowitz on the Washington Post talks about America’s ‘two nations’ screaming at each other across an increasingly wide chasm in which policy disagreements have converted into hate. 

Abramowize raises neither “C-word”... which I deem to be “cancer” and “confederacy” to describe the etiology of the ailment. But he does lay down the blatant demographic advantages of the Union, this time round of our Civil War.

At the same site, Daniel Drezner frets that President Barack Obama – faced with an intransigently lazy and uncooperative Congress – has been setting precedents for presidential/executive powers and actions that could be spectacularly abused in – shall we say – more flamboyantly irresponsible hands.  

== Fascism and history ==

This article by historian Fedja Buric appraises just which aspects of Mussolini’s original version of “fascism” can be compared to today’s rising mania in the US. He avows that America is in vastly better shape than 1920s Italy, with stronger institutions and traditions and civil service.

Where parallels get stronger are in the fervent anti-intellectualism of today’s right - with the War on Science now biliously expanded to include every center of knowledge in American life, from journalism and medicine to teaching to economics and law.

And politics… the art of negotiation and consensus building that allows a pragmatic-sensible people to incrementally fine-tune their shared processes and get things done. The Fox-Limbaugh campaign of 30 years has whipped up a froth of hatred of government and politics in principle, that our parents in the Greatest Generation would have instantly recognized as fascistic.

“Fascism promised people deliverance from politics. Fascism was not just a different type of politics, but anti-politics. On the post-WWI ruins of the Enlightenment beliefs in progress and essential human goodness, Fascism embraced emotion over reason, action over politics.  Violence was not just a means to an end, but the end in itself because it brought man closer to his true inner nature.” 

“Trump did not invent this anti-politics mood, but he tamed it in accordance with his own needs.  Ever since the election of Barack Obama the Republicans have refused to co-govern.  Senator Mitch McConnell’s vow that his main purpose would be to deny the president a second term was only the first of many actions by which the Republicans have retreated from politics.”

Where Buric fails is in relating his narrow historical view of fascism to other, older romantic movements, such as the recurring American fever called the Confederacy.  What this reveals is that a corner of the populace does not need hard economic times, to be whipped into hydrophobic fury. There is a thread in the American psyche that does not need desperation, in order to rush eagerly into desperate madness.

Meanwhile.. the hacktivist group Anonymous declares war on Donald Trump. Yeah, okay. Whatever.  For the rest of us out here, let's put Mr. Trump's victorious march in perspective, as the Washington Post does in an epic editorial:

"For all his unpredicted success, the number of Americans who have voted for him so far amounts to only 4.7 percent of eligible voters, according to a calculation by the organization FairVote." 

In other words, while the most vigorous confederates have spoken -- and there was very very little doctrinal difference between them and Cruz supporters... both wings of fanatical fury amounted to no more than 10% of eligible voters.

All that's needed is for the rest of us to wake up.

== International worries ==

Nigeria and Switzerland have agreed a deal for the latter to return more than $300 million of funds confiscated from former Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha.  Abacha - who led Nigeria between 1993 and his death 1998 - is suspected to have looted up to $5 billion of public funds during his reign. This is the tip of the iceberg and the solution must be found by developing nations, themselves. 

On the other hand... "In a move that could simultaneously ease the debt of Ecuador and deliver a huge blow to rainforest conservation efforts, Ecuador is set to auction off one third of their pristine rainforest, 3 million hectares of their 8.1 million, to Chinese oil companies."  Oy.  

America’s year without a winter: The 2015-2016 season was the warmest on record. The Lower 48 states had its warmest winter in 121 years of record-keeping, NOAA announced this morning.

And don’t give us “yearly variation.” The oceans are acidifying more, every single year. Dig this well.  The climate denialist cult is an enemy of civilization and our nation and world.  They are lunatics who each day are directly harming your children.  They need to be told this directly, eye to eye… that they are fetishistically wrong about this as with nearly every other koolaid belief that they suckled as their “side’s” dogmatic incantation. They should not be allowed power over the human future.

Oh, BTW... in the arguments over bailing our Puerto Rico, let's not forget that Texas petitioned to join the Union because it was bankrupt and people were starving.....

== … and finally … ==

Emails?  Really? After 20 years proclaiming the Clintons to be “criminals,” all you’ve got is using the wrong email server? Here’s the hypocrisy. In 2007, Congress asked the Bush administration for emails regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

Over 5 million White House emails sought in connection with this Congressional investigation could not be produced -- because they were on a non-government server. Two years later, it was revealed that as many as 22 million emails had been deleted -- in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Yet this event received astronomically less coverage than today’s ‘controversy’ over the minuscule problems from the archiving of Hillary Clinton’s emails.